Presentation Type
Paper
Abstract
While having children is an individual or couple based decision, general population trends help to indicate correlations between certain factors and fertility. Among these factors is the state of the economy. For an individual deciding on potential children, the expected costs can help to explain whether or not a person knowingly and purposefully plans to have children. The concept of this research is to combine the qualitative data on personal ideologies about having children with the quantitative data on how the economy has impacted these fertility decisions. On the most basic level, this research aims to gain insight on the cultural ideologies behind the decision to either have or not have children. The more involved portion of the proposed research hopes to answer to question: what are the immediate effects of an economic recession on an individual’s decision to have children, if any? This research proposes to probe whether there an awareness of an economic recession has an impact on an individual’s decision to have children by asking participants to rate the importance of multiple ideological factors that go into fertility decisions based on in-depth interviews and surveys.
Categories
Social Sciences
Research Type
Thesis
Mentor Information
Dr. David Himmelgreen
Included in
Economic determinism of reproductive ideologies
While having children is an individual or couple based decision, general population trends help to indicate correlations between certain factors and fertility. Among these factors is the state of the economy. For an individual deciding on potential children, the expected costs can help to explain whether or not a person knowingly and purposefully plans to have children. The concept of this research is to combine the qualitative data on personal ideologies about having children with the quantitative data on how the economy has impacted these fertility decisions. On the most basic level, this research aims to gain insight on the cultural ideologies behind the decision to either have or not have children. The more involved portion of the proposed research hopes to answer to question: what are the immediate effects of an economic recession on an individual’s decision to have children, if any? This research proposes to probe whether there an awareness of an economic recession has an impact on an individual’s decision to have children by asking participants to rate the importance of multiple ideological factors that go into fertility decisions based on in-depth interviews and surveys.
